[...] Note the water in the photos of the 1st floor. The color of the water is rust red. According to Asahi Shinbun, the depth of the water is 6.1 meters from the basement floor, about half way to the 1st floor. [...]

Did they fill with de-ionized water? DI water is very aggressive. When our plant had an incident where less than ten thousand gallons of 18.3 Mohm/cm spilled, we had massive corrosion by the next morning. We constantly had to coordinate our supply of DI resin with some local nuclear plants to keep from outing their water polishing banks.

Love your comments esp this one:
Remember something simple: Nuke plants are around because they make good money. Nuke plants are not around because they save the planet from green house gasses nor are they cheaper in the long run on an economy.

Another common sense thing: Nuke plants have TONS of safety measures (ie constant training, 24 security and staff, lots of government oversight, massive scrutiny, and a metric ton of science and tech redundancies poured into these plants)…why?

Nah, that’s just his version of sarcasm. My reply to his comment goes with his tone, more sarcasm. Besides…I am a man beast! I mean, I am no longer the skinny computer nerd…I’m now a buff muscle machine thanks to my 5 and 10lb Kmart dumbell set I bought. lol

This is the material that is clogging the water treatment machine that stopped working within hours of starting and the thickness and high radioactive levels, removal of this is going to require a whole lot of problems (over 19 ft. deep) if not HAVING to siphon into more containers that they do not have for the others are full, and will require dumping to make room,…dump where ? More bad news coming shortly to all concerned about the sea, One unexpected anomaly after another, complication after complication and new problems emerging, This disaster hasn’t even hardly started folk’s, this nuclear snowball is picking up Size AND Speed !

These survey results appear to be reasonable. Water is an excellent shielding material for radiation.With many feet of water most of the radiation is shielded since the most radioactive material is under the water on the floor. It has been awhile but I think that the 10th value shielding for water is about 12 inches. So 2 feet of water would shield material under the water by a factor of 100. The water itself is incredibly radioactive but the major source would be on the floor under it since most material would not be floating in the water.

These results say a few things: no one will be ever going down those stairs when or if the water is lowered, there is no technology that will ever filter this water, and if they remove any of this water dose rates in the entire reactor building will rise so much that only robots will be able to enter the building.

Wouldn’t the only way the shielding would work if it was contained in it’s original form in rods undamaged or melted and under clear/clean water ?
This water with the red rust tint shows that it is a mix of elements and radioactivity that is not of standard safety of less chance of exposure, the reading suggest this alone, so the 12 inches rule would not imply, nor would the water need treatment to try to remove the one isotope, right ?

Most of the red color is most likely from carbon steel components in the basement. I have been down in these areas in many nuclear plants including Fukushima and the majority of steel down there is not stainless steel, but carbon steel which rusts with a red color fairly easily.

This carbon steel is not used for primary systems that normally carry reactor coolant, and does not imply any specific isotope.

The shielding formula is imperfect because there is some material suspended in the water. But most of the source material is metallic (fuel itself,cladding, and other parts of the core that melted)and these particles will mostly just be sitting under the water since they are heavier than the water and will not suspend easily.

I have worked as a chemistry technician and as a radiation safety technician at a number of nuclear plants throughout the world. The Torus or suppression chamber at the bottom of those stairs has very little stainless steel, so a red rust color would be natural in that area from the regular carbon steel. That would be especially true after the use of sea water and it’s corrosive nature.

The amount of this particulate mater (rust) would make water clean up or filtering even more difficult, although it is moot because the dose rate is so high that it is filtering this water is impossible no matter what TEPCO says.

chrisk9
HI, Would most of that steel be painted and the paint would most likely be many layers of due to the age of the plant, do you think it could be the zirconium coating (is that right ?) breaking down blown, burnt free from around the fission material during explosion’s and fires or swelling cracking falling away when heat built up ?

Mankind has no technology to get rid of this “water”. It has to be filled into containers and brought somewhere where it is safer (mine etc.). I can not imagine that this mess can be filtered out at all.

But if it stays where it is, it will slowly find its way into underground water and the ocean.

well im no geologist but a search of the word silt movement japan gave me the facts that there are some unique wildlife reserves around there by the coast…brought up some issues of soil erosion too!! apparently at different times of year the soil on the hills obviously finds its way to the coast…it then joins the sea sediment movement…and thats as far as i got…however the reports of sediment from sellafield/windscale are well documented…for more ask the irish and norwegian governments, they know!! the sediment also moves along the western coastline heading north, rounds the tip of scotland and precedes to move south along the coastlin as well as east across the sea to norway.. currents favourable, wind etc all act on it,, we could extraplicate that something similar could happen in japan…just my thoughts needs a geologist to further the theory…but it gives you an idea…(anybody had problems searching for japanese names on google maps recently?)peace

IF get rid of this water, will they not have to put more water on the keep the curium cool and have more water that is dense with radiation and then have to deal with that also ?
The want to remove fearing some is leaking through to the sea, but the catch 22 here make all so futile it seems, so it is for the public that they are making progress in some way and that the public is not understanding the dog is really chasing his tail and with all the activity nothing really is being accomplished ! Bubble gum for the eyeballs of them watching !

Radegan! You totally beat me to the “punch”…
I was going to take off with Tacoma’s color differentials
between Reactor Vats…”AAAaaahhhh, Yes! Now
available to only the most exclusive of collectors…
your choice of varietal No. 2 Red, or No.3 Plutox Yellow.
You may pick up your canister starting at $20,000,000
equivalent Gold Bullion at Best price reached in June.

I sure would like to feed this Yamashita fellow one of those new Japanese steaks made from poop, and let him wash it down with ‘red bull’ from the reactor. He would certainly get a taste of his own medicine.

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